SO BELOW - EVENT LOG

[pluviosamods]

SO BELOW

With a slightly bump that can be felt throughout the ship, progress levels out. The skies above are threatening rain, but there aren't any drops falling from the sky... Yet.

Not that you'd know it, looking out the windows. A foreign ocean stands outside, on the other side of the glass - the ghost of an ocean, long gone from the truth of this world.

Just like so many other things, which have become visible to those who are willing to pay attention.

This is the event log for SO BELOW. Information for the first part of the Event (days 15 and 16) can be found here, along with sign-up options for the second part of the event.

Comments

[pluviosamods]

"Who else?" the young man replies - but after a pause, he stops and really looks at Shang Qinghua, and his eyes widen.

"I don't know you," he says.

[airplaneskyward]

"I also don't know you!" The guy seems surprised to see someone he doesn't know, but also not unfamiliar with the lounge. Hm. If he is one of the ghosts, he hopes he's not a solid one that's about to attack him? He tucks his hands into his sleeves in a gesture that probably looks harmless to a westerner, but gives him access to some of his qiankun pouches, where he can fumble for a spirit-binding talisman by the feel of the qi alone. "I... only got here recently?" he hazards. If this guy is a new arrival, well, he's not lying, less than three weeks is still pretty recent. "So, um, I don't know who?"

[pluviosamods]

"That's not possible," the guy says. He seems pretty firm on this matter, and thus confused. "We're the last. Like, the last of humanity. If anyone else - if there was anyone else, everyone would know."

[airplaneskyward]

Will he make this weirder if he tells the truth? Sure, why the fuck not. "I actually think I'm from a different like, dimension than this? I have no idea how I got here or what's going on. I just woke up on the... leg boat. There was, um, not an apocalypse back home?" Okay, so 'the last' implies there is only one leg boat, which answers a thought he had talking to Wet Justice, so... there's that?

[pluviosamods]

"You gotta be kidding me." The guy looks Shang Qinghua up and down, and then says, "This is her new way of fucking with us, isn't it?"

Before he can get an answer, he sighs and says, "Fine, you bitch. I'll play along this time. Where'd you get the idea for that outfit, anyway..." The last is a mutter.

[airplaneskyward]

"Can we operate under the assumption that I don't know who 'she' is? Is she... trying to kill people?" He looks down at his clothes. "I'm from China?" Sort of, anyway. Also, China isn't on, what was this planet called, Matye? anyway, so it's not like it matters. And PIDW is basically fantasy China. Whatever. "These are normal clothes where I'm from." For a peak lord, anyway. "Is there even a China here?" He's assuming no, but maybe it will sound, um, realistically confused if he asks? "What happened to everyone else?"

[pluviosamods]

"Sure, fine, you areh novel weirdo." ("Areh novel" parses to something like danmei or shoujo, but not quite. There's some key component of the genre that didn't come loaded in with the language, but it's definitely a little mocking to actually call someone that to their face.) "It's not like we stay dead. Not those of us that are left. Everyone who could get killed off is already dead."

[airplaneskyward]

...Yes he is a weirdo from a novel. But okay, the dude just... thinks he's a cosplayer? Or else he just thinks he's from a universe of weeb shit, one or the other. He can't even argue the point, so he's going to ignore it. "...So you... resurrect? Reincarnate? Some other thing? There are a lot of ways to come back to life. Um. Did she kill everyone outside too?" He really does want to know what the fuck happened to this planet. Also, if no one stays dead, where the fuck are they now! You're a fucking ghost, sir, so apparently something fuckin killed you!

[pluviosamods]

"They were already dead," the guy says, leaning back into the couch. "They've been dead a long time. Or at least, if there's anyone still around, they're not answering us, and we've been putting out calls for months now. I don't think the Ship's lying about not getting an answer."

[airplaneskyward]

"...How long? That sounds like longer than months, but you've only been putting out calls for months? Were you like, born on mystery leg boat? What killed all the people? Um." He should stop talking so much at once, probably. He just really wants to know what the fuck is going on and this guy is... sort of more forthcoming than the Ship? "How many of you are left?"

[pluviosamods]

"Born here? Man, maybe if..." The guy shakes his head. "If we get lucky, maybe there will be a couple kids born here, for whatever it's worth. If we can get her to stop long enough. But no, they died because it's a wasteland outside, you know? We're just the ones that got lucky, if you could call it that, and this tin can showed up."

[airplaneskyward]

"Was it like, a nuclear apocalypse, with bombs, or...?" Maybe if he physically restrains himself to only one question the dude will answer him. Who the fuck is She. That's gonna be the next try. But also, hey, cool, ghost dude doesn't seem aggressive, so there's that.

[pluviosamods]

He's mostly tired, at least for the moment. "Bombs? Not a chance. No point. No, they just kept making it worse - use more radiation to power the cities keeping the radiation out, until you get tiny pockets of life and everything else is dead." He grunts and shoves his hands in his hoodie pockets.

[airplaneskyward]

Okay. Radiation not from bombs. "Nuclear... power?" he hazards. Maybe he wasn't so irrelevant rambling about Chernobyl at Wet Justice. But also, "Shit, dude, I'm sorry, that sounds depressing as hell. ...how is the Ship keeping the radiation out? Or are we all dying a slow turbocancer death here?"

[pluviosamods]

"Well, it's not running the big engines, so it's probably fine," the guy says. "As long as the barrier's in place, it'll be a long time before there's any risk. Five or six hundred years or something, long enough that we'll all die of something else before we have to worry about it. Silver linings, right?"

[airplaneskyward]

Uh. He doesn't like that number. How does he... "What year is it? How do you even count years here?" He can ask the Ship what year it is and if they're all going to die of turbocancer later, right? "Also I thought you said you couldn't die?"

cw mentions of suicide

[pluviosamods]

"Short-term, yeah. Long-term? Who the hell knows if we're going to age or... what. And if it's a couple centuries of this I'll throw myself over the side just to get out."

[airplaneskyward]

Well... fair enough, he guesses? If there's someone making life miserable... back to 'her'. "Because it's miserable here? Because of her?" Also, goddamnit, this is what he gets for asking multiple questions again. What year is it dude.

[pluviosamods]

"Yeah," he agrees easily. "What's the point of hurting people who have already lost everything? She just likes to kick us while we're down."

[airplaneskyward]

“…Who is she?” No more words. One question. Please dude he is dying of curiosity.

[pluviosamods]

"The person who's been here the longest. She was already here when we got here."

The youth seems like he's about to say more, but then the ship tilts downward, causing the couch he's on to start to slowly slide (and probably whatever Shang Qinghua is sitting on, too). He grunts and digs in his heels, leaning his weight forward to try and prevent the couch from interrupting his conversation. "If she has a name, she hasn't told it to us. And the Ship doesn't acknowledge her - she's not a 'passenger.' We're pretty sure she's a ghost, just a lot more solid than the others."

[airplaneskyward]

Shang Beida tucks his feet up onto the couch and just leans into the tilt to avoid falling over, letting the damn thing slide however it's going to. It's not like the ghost is going to be successfully bracing his couch. (Right?)

Uh, terrifying? Is she still here? Ghosts can't die, right? Probably? "What does she... do?" Didn't someone say something pretended to push them off a balcony? He could as--no, wait, no other questions, or the ghost will pick the most frustrating possible one to ignore.

[pluviosamods]

The couch does indeed begin to slide, though the ghost seems to be blaming it on the lack of tread on his worn out shoes, from the way he glares down at them and digs his heels in. (It continues to do nothing.)

"Whatever she finds entertaining at the time," he says, "which usually goes badly for us. Seals rooms and starts flooding them. Drops the elevator down the shaft. You get it."

[airplaneskyward]

Well, that doesn't sound...unlike the balcony thing.

Fuck it, let's go for broke. Who killed the world? "Where did the radiation come from?"

[pluviosamods]

The ship bumps and levels out for a minute.

"...Hell of a topic change," the guy says, but he doesn't seem to object to dropping the other subject. "I couldn't tell you for sure - people had to start holing up in the cities before even my grandparents were born, you know? And from what we've been able to get out of the Ship, we were getting a pretty biased education. So, when I tell you that we were told that it was because of an attempt at creating a new energy source that went wrong, take it with a grain of salt, all right?"